Meeting to order for the common council of the town of Payson.

Uh Michelle, do you have a roll call for us?

Yes, let the record show that all council members are present except for council member clarity.

Okay, thank you.

And the purpose of this meeting is to provide a basic overview of the local government framework as described in Arizona revised statutes, open meetings law and town code, uh, and also to uh discuss to provide an overview of the council policy manual.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Christina and I are probably going to um tag team on this presentation because there's a lot of information.

We'll probably need a drink of water in between each of these.

Just clarifying.

Uh in between the uh slides here.

So most of this presentation is the same from two thousand and twenty-two.

So those of you that are returning, yes, sir.

Can we tip the TV towards the wall?

The right and left-hand corner.

I don't know.

Yeah.

There you go.

Yeah.

But my the iPad did we need paid.

Okay.

Never mind.

That's great.

Thank you.

I can see it a little better now.

So those of you that went uh were elected last cycle, you would have heard this presentation once before.

Much of it is the same.

And for those of you who uh took advantage of the newly elected officials training last week, some of the content will be similar to what you heard presented at the League of Arizona Cities and Towns.

So the intent today is to cover uh governance in general and town of Payson governance, touch on council's appointed representatives, your boards and commissions, how to handle constituent requests, interactions with staff, um, policies and procedures for your council meetings, and then we'll finish up with Arizona open meeting law, refresher and conflicts of interest, and how to deal with those.

Any questions before we get started?

Town of Payson was incorporated in 1973.

We operate under the general laws of the state of Arizona, and so basically, Arizona revised statutes provide our authority as a town to act or take action.

Within that town code, there's a sixty-page council policy manual that's incorporated in there, and it prescribes basically how we do what we do.

Council makes policy decisions.

We as staff provide recommendations and advice to help you be informed in the making of those decisions with data and other things.

The town manager is delegated the responsibility of carrying out the decisions of the town council.

So the town manager and their management team have the responsibility for hiring and terminating personnel, managing town operations within the budget that's approved by the town council, and implementing our services on a day-to-day basis.

This allows the council to spend time listening to the concerns of their constituents.

Town manager roles and responsibilities are as outlined here.

Direct and coordinate the municipal administrative activities of the town, attend meetings of the town council, direct official responses to inquiries concerning the operation of town government, and prepare and present a balanced budget for council's consideration annually.

Once that budget's approved, we are also responsible for monitoring that budget, as you know, from time to time.

Those projections that we make, either on the revenue side or the expenditure side, aren't always as we had anticipated in May or June when we're working on that budget, and so as we continue to monitor that throughout the year, if amendments are needed, we recommend amendments to the council for your consideration as appropriate as well.

The town manager is responsible for reviewing the organization and procedures, supervising the preparation of materials for public reporting, negotiating contracts, and other agreements that will come to the town council.

Represent the town at meetings for various community organizations, clubs, and similar entities.

Administering the town's personnel system, currently we have approximately 150 full-time employees.

I don't think I updated this slide.

That was before we assumed responsibility for the B line bus, so that number increased that a little bit, and advising council on policy matters.

How many employees are there now?

So we use a figure that is a full-time equivalent.

So when we get into discussion on the budget, we can talk specifically about that how that number gets figured.

So if there's a person that works 20 hours a week and another person that works 20 hours a week together, they make one FTE.

So a lot of times if you see a list of employees, you know, you can see that number fluctuate because in the summer, for example, we would have temporary staff refereeing events for games for our rec programs or helping with setup or tear down for some of those, and so there may be someone on the books as an employee, but they may not be a full-time regular employee.

So about 150-ish full-time.

Okay.

Town council, on the other hand, is responsible for basically all of the corporate powers of the town are vested in the council, and you carry out that power through ordinances, resolutions, orders, and motions.

No individual council person has the authority to direct town staff except for those that you employ your town manager and town attorney because the council needs to act as a body.

So the majority of the council is where the power lies.

Most of the time that's four.

Sometimes there are things that require more than a simple majority of the council, and Christina's going to talk a little bit about that as we go on.

You are responsible for enacting legislation, approving the budget, enforcing council's standards and policy, and we're talking about some of those in today's presentation, but essentially that 60-page manual that I mentioned was incorporated into town code.